Abstract
There have been few reports on allergens in tomato fruit, one of foods causing oral allergy syndrome. We examined the major allergens by immunoblotting methods using 25 patients' sera with high IgE antibody titers for tomato fruit. Of these patients, 14 patients showed OAS after eating tomato. Approximately 15 protein bands were reactive to IgE antibodies from the patients. Five bands showed IgE-binding activity with more than 50% of the subjects. These proteins were deduced polygalacturonase 2A (46kDa), β-fructofuranosidase (25kDa and 22kDa), superoxide dismutase (18kDa), pectinesterase (14kDa) by homology search based on N-terminal amino acid sequences. These, except superoxide dismutase, may be proteins related with ripening because they were increased with maturation of tomato fruit.
